


Mad World

by loversandantiheroes



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cursed!Storybrooke - Henry's dreams are dark and troubling, and somehow still better than what he sees when he wakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mad World

Crazy.

One word.  Two syllables.  Five letters.  Three consonants and two vowels, or four consonants and one vowel, there was the nature of the y to consider after all.

Henry penciled the word hard into the margin of his English book in all capital letters.  C-R-A-Z-Y.

Cuckoo, the kids in his grade said.  Loco en la cabeza.  Whacko.  Mental.  Two sandwiches short of a picnic.  Insane in the membrane.  In one book he’d read, one of the characters had not been crazy, but had had “bats in their belfry."  Henry liked the expression, but wasn’t sure what a belfry was.  He suspected it was some sort of mental institution where the loonies screamed and flapped their arms around like bats.

His mother seemed happy enough to make him believe he was crazy, but vehemently denied it to everyone, Henry included.  Dr. Hopper, his therapist said much the same, though he tried to say it in a nicer way.  No, Henry wasn’t crazy.  Henry was  _troubled_.  Henry was  _going through a tough time_.  Henry was _working through his issues_.

Henry didn’t feel like he was working through anything.

Henry, in all truth, felt like he was drowning in a public pool.  No lifeguard coming to rescue him, no one throwing out a life preserver.  Everyone simply watched him go under.

The dreams had come first.  Understanding had followed in their wake, the fire kindled by simple sparks.  Slowly he had come to see, truly see the town around him, as if all his life he had been asleep.  He could remember asking his mother once in first grade why none of his friends from kindergarten were in his class.  She had kissed him on the forehead and made an excuse, but what she had done in truth was to whisper to his struggling mind,  _Go back to sleep.  Everything is fine, just go back to sleep._

And so Henry Mills, it seemed, had slept through his first ten years, until the dreams came.

He had gone to bed angry.  An argument with his mother.  Laying in bed he was already having a hard time what the argument had been about.  All he seemed to be left with was an increasingly disjointed sense of anger.

_Go back to sleep, Henry.  Everything is fine.  Everything is the same.  Go back to sleep._

Henry closed his eyes.

_Everything the same._

A million miles away a clock struck a harsh chord to herald midnight.

 _Go back to sleep_.

The clock chiming chased him into his dream, into darkness.  

He was looking down on a hospital room, as if tethered to the ceiling.   _Like I’m dead_ , he thought.   _Like it’s a movie and I’m dead_.

Fear crawled its way up his belly.  His mother was there.  She was crying.  Doctor Whale, too, ginger hair sticking up at mad angles, and dead or not, Henry thought he could smell something sour on the man, something like the whiskey his mother kept in a cut glass decanter in her office.  Beside the good Doctor was a nun in a blue habit.  Shaking fingers drew a cross in the air as she whispered a prayer.

There was a small, sunken figure in the hospital bed at the center of the gathering.  The thin white chest was covered in electrodes.  The monitor at the bedside keened a singular, flat alarm note.  The electrodes found no heartbeat.  The thin chest, his chest, did not rise with breath.  

A nurse pulled the oxygen mask off of the boy’s face.

Henry stared down at himself.   _I could be sleeping_ , he thought, but he knew in this place, he was not.

Henry watched with the others as his body died.  No one moved to revive him.  No one tried to save him.  Henry realized with a dizzying sense of finality that he could not be saved.  He had slipped into black water and gone under too far.  No rescue.  No salvation.

The scene below stuttered and shook, darkness infusing it, clouding it.  Fresh fear twisted his stomach, and Henry felt distinctly he was being fought over, someone or something scrabbling to take the dream from him before it was finished, before he saw what he was meant to see.

A roaring in his ears, filling his head, shaking him to the bone.

_(no no no no damn you no how dare you how dare you he is mine he is miiiiiiine)_

And Henry had woken in his bed, bolt-upright and hugging his knees.  Sweat plastered his hair to his head, tears rolled freely down his face as he wept.  The dream was fading fast, only shreds remained, but he held to them tightly, as terrified of forgetting it as he was of the dream itself.   _That voice_.

He wept openly, wishing desperately for his mother but not daring to call out for her, knowing somehow deep in his heart that he could not speak of his dream to her.

That voice at the last, screaming out in fear and rage and hatred, had been his mother’s voice.

Back in his classroom, Henry watched his teacher, Miss Blanchard, as she paced the room, reading aloud from the textbook.  He made a small hash mark by the title -  _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_  - in his own book.  It joined a rank of others.  Five to a group, five groups to a row, three full rows and a fourth unfinished.  Sixty-three times his teacher had read the same passage from the same story.

“‘None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do;’" Miss Blanchard recited, “‘but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning—either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again.’"

Henry pushed the tip of his pencil hard into the pages of the book.  The lead snapped.

His dream was not beautiful.  

The boy rubbed his eyes.  He wanted to sleep.  He had not slept a solid night since the dreams had started.  It was the same every night, the voices, the light, the hospital room, and then he was wrenched away.  Three months, dreaming the same dream, pulled along by someone unseen to hover over a hospital bed and watch the life leave his body.  Then in the daylight to stumble along, feeling as the only blind man in a world of blind men who has suddenly gained the power of sight.

Everything was wrong.  Everything was the same.  Everything was  _exactly_  the same.  Every day.  Miss Blanchard read aloud the passage from C.S. Lewis as she had sixty-three days in a row.  Soon she would collect their math assignments, a sheet of 100 multiplication problems that Henry could now fill in blindfolded.  Then lunch would be called, a questionable slice of turkey and gravy with instant mashed potatoes, limp green beans, and a petrified dinner roll.  They would return to class single-file, Grace at the head of the line, Henry dragging along at the rear, and Miss Blanchard would wheel out a cart of pre-cut wooden pieces and paper mache and they would build birdhouses.

Every day.  Every single day.

The only thing that was different now was Dr. Hopper, his therapist.  A month ago Henry had out of sheer desperation tried to talk to his mother.  Not about the dreams, God no.  In his waking hours he could remember almost nothing about them, but somehow he always knew he could not tell his mother about them.  He could not.  It was lame, it was something he’d only heard in the movies, but he was still sure that his very life depended on it.  

Sometimes he still wanted to, despite his own surety.  Sometimes his heart grew so heavy in his chest he was desperate to look up at his mother and say,  _Mom every night in my dreams I die and there’s more, there’s something I’m supposed to see but then the dream gets pushed away and I know it’s you doing it mom, I know it’s you, so can we please cut the crap and stop pretending everything is fine and cool and normal and ok?  Please?  Please can you just tell me what is happening to me?_

Instead he had come to her about the rest of the town.  His class work that was the same every day.  The people he passed in the street that seemed forever stuck in the same actions like a mechanical exhibit.  She had to see it too, didn’t she?

His mother had stared, and Henry glimpsed the terror in her eyes for the briefest moment before she had waved it away.  Such a thing just wasn’t possible.  Was he feeling alright?  Perhaps he had watched too much tv.

_Go back to sleep.  Everything’s the same.  Go back to sleep._

Henry had recoiled from her, terrified and angry, and shrieked,  _No!  NO!  I WON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP, I WON’T!  YOU CAN’T MAKE ME ANYMORE!_

His mother’s mouth was agape, eyes wide in shock and he saw the terror was back, the terror was real, and something inside screamed in vindication.  He had woken up for the first time in his life, and now she could do nothing to send him back to sleep.

His first visit with Dr. Hopper had been the next day.

Henry scooted his book around on his desk, restless and exhausted, and thrust his hand into the air, stopping his teacher in mid-sentence.

"Wh…yes, Henry?  What is it?" Miss Blanchard asked, dazed at his interruption.  This was not on schedule.

"I’m not feeling well, Miss Blanchard, can I please see the nurse?"

Frowning, she crossed to him quickly, feeling his forehead.  "You do seem a bit warm.  Let me write you a hall pass."

Henry walked through the halls, his hands buried in his pockets, head down.  His chest hitched as the tears started.  He couldn’t talk to his mother.  He couldn’t talk to his therapist.  He had no friends.  Had no father, none that he knew anyway.  He had been adopted as a baby, his birth parents never even discussed.  All he had was his mother, and he couldn’t even trust her.

The Nurse’s Station was hard to find with his eyes full of tears, but somehow he made it, blindly pushing his way through the door and into a warm, sunlit room.  The nurse was out, the room deserted.  A cot on an old high iron bed frame was wedged beneath the open window, and Henry crawled into it, burying his head into the crooks of his elbows to stifle the sunlight.  He wept, a lonely, broken boy, and wondered, not for the first time, if he wasn’t just crazy after all.

In the sunlight and silence of the empty office, Henry felt sleep grasp at him again, and this time he welcomed it.

* * *

Voices pealed out around him.  Whispering, laughing, screaming, growing louder.  Henry couldn’t pick out a single voice among them: they were simply too many.  Out of it, a singular, hushing note to silence the din, a voice called to him.

_Henry._

_You must come, son.  You must see.  See and understand._

Tumbling through cool blackness, falling up through abyssal dark to a widening circle of light that grew brighter and brighter and brighter.  Henry threw his arms up against the light, even at his age knowing or perhaps sensing what it meant.  Light was knowledge.  Light was truth.  And goddamn it that light  _hurt_.

 _Open your eyes_ , the voice said.

_I can’t!  It’s too much!  It’s going to burn me up!_

_It could, son, it could.  But it won’t.  I won’t let it.  It’s why I’m here.  Open your eyes and see.  See it very well._

Whimpering, Henry obeyed.

The scene was the same as before.  Doctor Whale held his mother as she wept.  The nurse disconnected Henry’s body from the machines that had kept him alive until a few moments before.  The nun whispered silent prayers.

Henry waited for the roaring to begin, for the darkness to cloud his surroundings like a plume of smoke, but nothing came.

Below him a figure moved.  A blonde woman, her face pale and pinched, walked dazedly to the bedside and took the dead Henry’s hand.

Hope seized Henry’s chest so hard it hurt.

_That can’t be…_

_It is_ , the voice answered.   _See it, Henry, see it well.  This is your mother come to save you.  Come to save us all._

She bent over his body, lifeless and still, tears falling on his waxen face.

 _I love you, Henry_ , she whispered, and touched her lips to his forehead.

There was a sound like a depth charge.  A pulse of rippling light shot out of the other Henry’s body like a shock wave.  Color bloomed in his cheeks, his narrow chest rose in sudden breath, and he opened his eyes.

Dead Henry was Alive again.  He beamed up at his savior, and in his dream Henry was amazed by the look of joy on his own face.  It was wonderful and alien.

 _I love you, too!_ , Alive Henry said.   _You saved me!_

The hospital scene retreated as Henry felt himself being pulled up, away from the scene of his resurrection, up into blackness, up, up, up…..

And onto the cold marble floor of a deserted ballroom.

Before him sat a man of perhaps forty in clothes of burlap and old, soiled linen.  A wooden walking stick, worn smooth with use, was propped up against his left leg.  Even under the baggy old trousers the crookedness of his ankle showed.  Henry wondered what had happened to cause such damage, and how much it must have hurt.  

"What is this place?" he whispered, awestruck.  The room was all dark polished stone and lank drapery.  "Am I still dreaming?"

"Yes, and then again no.  This is a place between.  A place of waiting.  It is not quite the waking world, nor is it a dream.  I have been here for a very very long time."  The man’s face was careworn, all hard angles, but somehow kind.  He smiled, and suddenly Henry knew that he knew him.

"But, you’re -" he began.

"Not important," the man said, waving it away.  "You won’t remember this, Henry.  And besides, the name you would call me isn’t me.  Not this me."

Henry frowned.   _You sound like Yoda,_  was what he wanted to say.  "I don’t understand," was what he said.

"I don’t expect you to."

"Okay.  If you’re not -" for a moment his mind wavered strangely, the name he wanted slipping away from him, a slew of others swimming briefly to the surface.  He shook it off.  "If you’re not who I think you are, then who are you?"

The man smiled, shook graying hair out of his eyes, and tapped his ruined ankle with the stick.  "Just an old cripple, my son.  No one important."

"My therapist says there’s no such thing as unimportant people.  He says everyone’s important, right down to the crickets in the field."

"Oh?  And what do you say?"

Henry shrugged.  "I think it’s a load of bullshit.  My mom pays him to fix me, so I guess he has to say something."

"Fix you?" the man asked, and stooped closer, eyeing him carefully.  "You don’t look broken to me, lad.  I’ve some experience in these things."  The stick tapped against the crooked ankle again.

Henry shook his head and gestured down at his body.  "I’m not broken down here."  He tapped a finger against his temple.  "I’m broken in here.  My mom says I’m crazy."

The man, and Henry was so sure that he knew him but somehow the knowledge floated farther and farther from his grasp the harder he thought about it, tilted his head.  Dark eyes narrowed.  "Now why would she say that?"

"I don’t know.  But there’s something wrong with me.  I heard her and Doctor Hopper talking about it one day.  He says there’s something wrong with my brain.  That real things don’t seem real to me.  Dissosative or something."

"Perhaps," the man said.  "And then again, perhaps it’s everyone else who can’t tell what’s real."

"The dream, was that real?"

He nodded, “Yes, it was.  I have shown you a future as it was shown to me."

"So I’m going to die?"

He nodded again.  "Yes, Henry, I’m afraid so."

"And that woman was-"

"Your birth mother, yes.  The Savior."

Henry frowned.  "Savior?"

"Storybrooke is cursed, Henry.  I think you know that now.  For the past twenty-seven years no one has aged, no one has been born, no one has died.  Time has stopped here, the people have stopped.  All but you, Henry.  You were born outside the curse, you are a child of this world, and that my son makes you very special.  That is why I sent you these dreams, Henry.  I need your help."

"Me?" Henry squeaked.  "What can I do?"

"This curse is very…particular," he said.  "Everyone in this town is from another place.  Not another city or country, but another world.  The curse brought them here, and it keeps them here.  But you, Henry, you were conceived in this world, and you were born in this world.  You are the only person who has crossed into Storybrooke, and you are the only person here who can leave it.

"You have to find her," he said, lacing his hands together.  "You must find your mother to break this curse."

Dream or not, Henry’s head was beginning to hurt.  "You said I wouldn’t remember any of this, though.  How can I find my mom if I can’t remember what she looks like?  Or even to look for her?"

"I have set remembrances to help you on your way.  If you choose to help, you will find them, or they will find you."

"But I’m dreaming.  What if that’s all this is?  What if I really am going crazy?"  

The man spread his hands.  "I could wax philosophic with you until your hairs turned as gray as mine, but I cannot tell you what you are.  What I can tell you is this: you have slept your whole life.  I woke you up.  What you do now is up to you."

"But you said - "

"What I showed you is what could happen.  What  _should_  happen.  But I cannot tell you what  _will_  happen.  That is a skill beyond my Sight.  There is another who would tell you that what I have shown you is the ultimate bargain.  You want your mother’s love, and that is something that you will never have the way things are now.  What I can offer you is a chance at the family you want, but the price is steep.  The price is your life.  You must die to live, Henry.  You must be willing to give up your life and trust that your mother will save you."

The man looked him over carefully.  "Magic always comes with a price, my son.  This one is very high.  Be very sure it is one you are willing to pay."

Die to live.  Again he saw the look of unbridled joy on his own face as he beamed up at his mother, his real mother, and a realization struck home hard: he had never even known happiness, let alone joy.  All his life had been lived in a haze of confusion and repetitive motion.

Henry took a deep breath.  "I have two questions.  If you answer them and you tell me the truth, I’ll do it.  I’ll find her."

"Very well.  Ask your questions."

"Ok.  My mother.  I mean, Regina.  The first night I had this dream and I got pulled out of it, I heard my mother’s voice.  Did…did she do this?  Is she the one that cursed everyone?"

A measured look.  "Yes, Henry.  She cast the curse."

The air left Henry in a rush and his stomach knotted.  Tears threatened in his eyes, but squeezed them shut until lights popped behind his lids like phantom fireworks.  No more crying.

"And your second question?"

Henry straightened.  "What’s your name?"

The man smiled at him strangely.  "You won’t remember it."

"Then what’s the harm?"

He stared at Henry, a look of comical surprise on his face.  And then he laughed.  "Very well, then.  You’ve earned it.  I have many names, and I will not bore you with the list, but the name my father gave me was Emrys."

Light flared in the corners of the room.  Disappointment in Emrys’ eyes.  "Our time is ending, Henry.  I have answered your questions, and true.  What do you say, lad?  Do we have a deal?"  

He stuck out his hand, and Henry took it.

"Deal."

The room was falling away, retreating, Henry swimming up into light once more.

Sunlight hit his sleeping eyes and Henry flinched, his dream evaporating in the light like so much morning dew.

Mrs. Terrance, the Nurse, stood over him, shaking his shoulder.

"Henry?  Henry!  What are you doing here?"

A name tried to come to his lips.  He chased it a moment, but it fled, too quick for him.  He had dreamed of someone.  A man.  He had made a deal to find….someone.

Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, Henry pulled himself up off the cot.  "I’m sorry," he said, “I came down because I had a stomach ache, but you weren’t here.  I guess I fell asleep."

The Nurse huffed.  "Teach me to think I could get a way for a cigarette.  Don’t ever start, Henry, you mind."

"Yes ma’am.  I’m feeling better now, I think I can go back to class."

Mrs. Terrance narrowed her eyes and stared at him over the rim of her glasses.  "Fourth grade, Henry, am I right?"

"Yes ma’am."

"Miss Blanchard didn’t by some small chance give you a surprise test, did she?

"No ma’am."

She held him fast a moment with scrutinizing eyes, then seemed to decided he was telling the truth.  "Alright then, off to class with you.  Mind you don’t mention I was out for a powder when you arrived!"

Smiling for the first time in what seemed like years, Henry walked out of the Nurse’s Station and into the coolness of the hallway again.  A word floated through his mind, a vague whisper -  _Emrys_  - and he stopped.  Did it mean something?  Was it a name?  A thing?

Nothing came.

Shrugging to himself, Henry carried on to class, feeling more rested than he had in weeks.  If it was important, it’d come to him eventually.

——————

_And I find it kind of funny_

_I find it kind of sad_

_The dreams in which I’m dying_

_Are the best I’ve ever had_

 - Tears for Fears,  _Mad World_


End file.
